What can you expect in a quantitative role. Do you have to be extra smart or you can learn and work hard to become a quantitative programmer.
Lastly what’s the most popular programming language among quants
and what kind of workloads you can expect.<p>I’m coming from a software background who did internships as I’m getting into field soon I’m trying explore different roles where I can do meaningful work<p>Would love to hear from the community
My company has something like a quantitative programmer but doesn't give it that exact title. I worked in an adjacent role and looked at moving into that sort of role and even a trader role, so I know a bit about it.<p>At my company the main tech they use is AWS, Python, R, and various homegrown and vendor financial software (like BlackRock Aladdin). They also use some excel, Tableau, and stuff like that for reports.<p>You have to be a quick learner, but I wouldn't say you need to be super smart. If you are super smart, then you will be more likely to be successful. You basically have to be competent in two domains - technology and finance. At least in my company, you would work closely with the actual quants (we call them analysts) and they can give you feedback and direction on your work. This type of work is usually for larger projects and permanent systems. This is more software dev and less finance.<p>We also have a role called something like trade desk programmer. These are typically business people with a background in trading/analysis that learn enough Python, scripting, R, and excel macros to be able to write small scripts or programs to do some sort of analysis or filtering as part of their trading activity. Each trading team would probably have 1 out of 5-10 people in that role. This type of work is smaller projects that are usually temporary or change often. This is more finance and less software dev. Hours are usually something like 7am to 5pm.
I will reply for the quantitative developer role, given your description I suppose that it's what you are looking for.<p>Succinctly, I would say that it's a strong computer scientist/developer highly interested in finance to be able to understand/discuss/implement business requests.<p>It's important to be able to work under pressure (when there is a problem on an automaton for instance, etc.). It's also important to be able to frequently switch between tasks.<p>I would not say that you have to be extra smart.<p>I started as a computer scientist in a bank, turned quantitative developer and then trader a couple of years later.
Would recommend the book The Complete Guide to Capital Markets for Quantitative Professionals, it's more an intro to how finance works rather than quant dev but will give you a sense of what it involves at a high-level.
You work as what we call a 'data monkey' for some economist or trader who can't work computers, thinks a linear fit is the state of the art, would jack off over an R² of >0.05, wants you to spend all your time automating p-hacking, and is almost certainly a sociopath or sex offender.